Optimized Network Infrastructure And Management

Evidence and data. Interviewees’ organizations previously faced high network costs and operational complexity due to reliance on perimeter-based security, legacy VPNs, and hardware-intensive infrastructure. The shift to AppGate’s software-defined solutions helped reduce interviewees’ organizations infrastructure costs while simplifying administration. Interviewees emphasized how AppGate ZTNA helped their organizations:  

• Reduce network infrastructure cost and complexity. Interviewees described how their organizations simplified network architecture by eliminating unnecessary infrastructure, hardware, software, and SaaS solutions while also eliminating routing inefficiencies and associated operational costs.

  • The network manager in the technology services industry reported that their organization safely consolidated from two legacy VPNs to a single AppGate ZTNA environment. In the process, their organization eliminated redundant VPN licensing costs. It also shifted away from costly and hardware-intensive MPLS architecture to a software-defined network that required fewer physical machines: “[With AppGate ZTNA], we can easily scale up by spinning additional VMs. We don’t need hardware devices. I just need to place a request with my hosting team and they’re able to quickly spin up a VM for me to scale.”
  • The cybersecurity manager in the manufacturing industry stated: “We were looking at one of our data centers having to go from a 1 gig circuit to a 10 gig circuit but we didn’t have to do that [when we went to AppGate]. Once we took the VPN traffic off, the 1 gig was more than enough. … I know the current circuit is $3,000 a month [in connectivity costs] but the 10 gig circuit could have been 10 times that. Once we took the load off there, the network team reported that the usage on that circuit went from 105% down to like 66%.”
  • The network security architect in the technology industry shared: “We use [AppGate ZTNA] now for replacing our NAC solution, because ... it led to a situation where the office really didn’t require any managed network to an extent. You could create a fully open public internet network that gives you internet access only, and the overlay of AppGate onto that network superimposes your defined per-user network, which was really simple.”

• Streamline networking administration costs. Interviewees also noted how their AppGate environments streamlined network administration across distributed environments with fewer FTEs required for networking infrastructure technology management compared to legacy VPNs and modern, cloud-routed solutions.

  • The cybersecurity manager in the manufacturing industry stated that their organization investigated cloud-routed ZTNA solutions that would have required additional staffing: “Looking at having to hire somebody just to manage my secure access is a little crazy. I know most companies probably already have that but we’ve never needed it and so AppGate is a big part of why we don’t need it.”
  • The head of information security in the financial services industry shared how their organization was able to avoid the internal administrative effort and risk of patching and updating systems with AppGate ZTNA: “Basically, it’s delivered as like a SaaS-type of tenant, so we don’t have to think about upgrades, deployment path, or anything like that. They just maintain all that for us, even though we deployed gateways on-prem, they also maintain those. They maintain our entire environment, so they keep things up to date and they will give us a change log.”

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• The composite organization’s networking infrastructure costs totaled $4 million in the prior environment.

• The composite organization’s legacy networking infrastructure required 1.5 FTEs to manage in the prior environment.

• The average fully burdened annual salary for a technical resource is $143,520.

• AppGate ZTNA lowers networking infrastructure technology and management costs by 50% through eliminating routing inefficiencies and unnecessary infrastructure, hardware, software, and SaaS solutions while preventing further associated operational costs.

Risks. The following risks may impact this benefit:

• The number of remote-access users.

• The number of legacy tools and internal labor effort needed to manage them.

• Required capabilities and existing contractual terms.

• Prevailing labor rates and the skill sets available.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 20%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $4.2 million.

Improved End-User Productivity

Evidence and data. Interviewees discussed how AppGate ZTNA made it easier for their users to get onboarded and productive quickly and consistently, giving them secure and consistent access to the tools they need without frustrating delays or performance issues.

• Faster, more performant and resilient connectivity. Interviewees said that AppGate ZTNA delivered faster, more resilient, and secure connectivity for their organizations by enabling direct, encrypted tunnels between users and resources, reducing latency, and supporting high-performance secure access at scale.

  • The network manager in the technology services industry explained how their organization enhanced end-user productivity by reducing latency and improving network performance with less interruption than in the prior environment: “We don’t have MPLS connectivity [anymore]. It’s all internet access. It’s point to point. I establish a direct tunnel to the data center, so I have a reduced latency and a faster login as well. [AppGate ZTNA also] improved session availability … and AppGate does its own internal certificate management, and we don’t have to worry about the certificates expiring. … We send a survey to all the users once every six months and we receive a lot of positive feedback about AppGate. Our users are very happy with the way we transformed from the legacy VPN to the new VPN [with AppGate].”
  • The head of information security in the financial services industry reported that prior to AppGate ZTNA, 60% their remote users were experiencing impacts of up to 15 minutes per week. With AppGate ZTNA, all users gained quick and reliable access to network resources leading to measurable productivity improvements: “[The] remote desktop use cases [no longer experienced a] delayed keyboard, a delayed mouse, total screen lockups, or disconnection [altogether. Now with AppGate], users can travel freely and expect high productivity through the system.”
  • The cybersecurity manager in the manufacturing industry noted how AppGate’s demand-based full tunneling helped foster more direct connections between users and resources when needed: “Under the old model, we were struggling to get 300 people connected simultaneously. On AppGate [now], I routinely have [up to] 5,000. … [And] the nice thing with AppGate is you can full tunnel if you want. We have a gateway dedicated to a full-tunnel connectivity … [so users] can flip their AppGate profile to a full tunnel and now they’re egressing out of [a closer data center] for all their traffic … then flip their profile back to their standard profile and they’re back to normal.”

• Quicker user onboarding with fewer troubleshooting issues. Interviewees reported that their organizations’ users experienced up to 70% faster onboarding with AppGate ZTNA with fewer access issues and reduced failure rates.

  • The network manager in the technology services industry shared that their users experienced faster onboarding with fewer issues and shorter troubleshooting SLAs with AppGate ZTNA compared to their prior environment. Users, including developers, had more consistent connectivity and fewer steps to access critical resources like the internal development environment: “We have achieved up to 70% faster onboarding because it’s all automated. Users don’t have to wait for a resource to pick the ticket — [they can] get access right now.”
  • The cybersecurity manager in the manufacturing industry shared how AppGate neutralized many of the issues impeding remote-end-user productivity at their organization: “File times to load spreadsheets off of the file shares [dropped] from 2 to 3 minutes down to 15 to 20 seconds [for some users]. We had about a 25% connection failure in Australia just due the timeouts. They never have login failures anymore. That’s a non-issue.”

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• Sixty percent, or 15,000 of the composite organization’s users require secure remote access to core network resources.             

• In the prior environment, remote desktop users experienced additional login steps, slower connection speeds, high latency, frequent session reboots, and other productivity impediments, causing each remote user to waste an average of 4 minutes per day on secure access issues.

• With AppGate ZTNA, the composite can support high-performance secure access at scale. It enables direct, encrypted tunnels between users and resources on demand, reducing latency and complexity. This streamlines the remote user experience and reduces the amount of time users spend onboarding and seeking support for user issues, helping the composite reduce the amount of time users waste on remote desktop issues by 75%.

• The fully burdened hourly rate for an end user is $40.

• End users recapture 25% of the hours that would have otherwise been lost to lengthy remote desktop procedures.

Risks. The following risks may impact this benefit:

• The performance of an organization’s legacy VPN solution.

• The size of organization, employee base, and breadth of AppGate ZTNA adoption.

• Prevailing labor rates and each user’s ability to recapture time savings toward productive activities.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 15%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $4.1 million.

Strengthened Security

Evidence and data. Interviewees shared how their organizations’ investments in AppGate ZTNA helped address significant security challenges in the prior environment that stemmed from broad network access, limited policy granularity, and legacy VPN architectures that exposed infrastructure to unnecessary risk. The shift to a Zero Trust model with dynamic, identity-based policies, cloaked infrastructure, continuous risk assessment, and just-enough-access (JEA) with AppGate ZTNA offered the following benefits:

• Delivered resilient security across complex environments. The interviewees shared how AppGate ZTNA’s direct-routed architecture established encrypted, point-to-point connections between their organizations’ users and resources. This design eliminated centralized traffic bottlenecks and reduced exposure to intermediary infrastructure, ensuring consistent security enforcement occurred locally regardless of user location or device type. By maintaining persistent identity verification and dynamic policy evaluation, interviewees noted that AppGate helped prevent unauthorized access and limited the opportunity for attackers to exploit shifting network conditions.
  The cybersecurity manager in the manufacturing industry stated: “The cloaked infrastructure is also another really cool piece of AppGate because [the] infrastructure is invisible to the internet unless you know the right secret code to get in. … We don’t have to worry [as much about our] gateways getting attacked because nobody knows they’re there. It’s unique [to AppGate]. I’ve yet to experience another solution that does it that way.”

• Improved monitoring capabilities with more precise access controls. Interviewees’ organizations enhanced their access control by replacing legacy VPNs with AppGate’s identity-centric, policy-driven architecture. Instead of broad network access, users were granted least-privilege access to only the specific resources they needed, down to individual IP addresses and ports. Interviewees said that access policies were continuously evaluated every 15 minutes, allowing for real-time enforcement based on user status, device posture, and risk scores. This dynamic monitoring meant that if a user’s account was disabled or their device became noncompliant (e.g., missing antivirus or outdated patches), access was automatically revoked without manual intervention. These capabilities extended to third-party users and contractors, who were given highly restricted access, minimizing exposure and risk.
  The cybersecurity manager in the manufacturing industry stated: “The user simply can’t laterally move anymore unless I have a policy that says they can. They can’t scan the network, so if an attacker were to try to get into my AppGate, they would have to get through multifactor first, and even then, they’re going to be stuck with an access policy that’s based on that user. They’re not going to be able to sweep the network. They’re not going to be able to do discovery. They’re not going to be able to do enumeration, so yeah, it does a lot.”

• Reduced attack surface and breach impact radius. Interviewees appreciated AppGate’s support for private IP provisioning, which eliminated the need for publicly exposed endpoints while reducing complexity and risk of misconfiguration. They also described how AppGate significantly reduced their organizations’ attack surfaces, including by cloaking their organizations’ network infrastructures and enforcing microsegmentation. Most network appliances became invisible to unauthorized users through techniques like single packet authorization (SPA), making it nearly impossible for attackers to scan or enumerate the environment. Interviewees further noted that their internal organizational systems, including sensitive “crown jewel” assets, were placed behind additional AppGate gateways, requiring explicit policy-based access even from within the corporate network. This approach blocked lateral movement and ensured that attackers could not explore or exploit the network beyond their limited entitlements, even if they had compromised credentials.  

  • The network security architect in the technology industry shared: “Before AppGate, in public cloud, everything had to be provisioned on public IPs, and you had an entry point that that could potentially be open to the world. With AppGate, you have your single packet authorization requirements, so no one gets in unless you’ve got you qualify for it. … Everything can happen on private IPs, whether it’s on-prem or in the public cloud anywhere in the world. It is just as simple as that.”
  • The cybersecurity manager in the manufacturing industry stated: “We have certain crown jewel systems … sitting behind a gateway on a nonroutable subnet on a network that you can’t get to even if you’re on the [our company’s] network. You can’t get to this network unless you connect to AppGate and you have a policy that says you’re allowed to talk to those crown jewel systems.”

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• The cumulative cost of breaches for the composite totaled nearly $3.6 million per year in the prior environment.³

• The composite has a 68% likelihood of experiencing one or more breaches.⁴

• Eighty percent of breaches targeting the composite organization originate from external attacks with high potential for lateral movement.⁵

• With AppGate ZTNA, the composite organization tightens network access with expanded policy granularity and decommissions legacy VPN architectures that exposed infrastructure to unnecessary risk. As a result, the composite organization gains the native ability to enforce contextual access control and apply segmentation, reducing infrastructure risk inherent in the prior environment. This minimizes the composite’s exposure to breach costs from addressable attacks by 80%.

Risks. The following risks may impact this benefit:

• The size and industry of the organization, which can impact the likelihood and associated costs of security breaches annually.

• An organization’s legacy security capabilities and level of AppGate ZTNA coverage and adoption.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 20%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $3.1 million.

Improved Availability And Resilience

Evidence and data. Interviewees reported that their organizations’ shift to cloaked infrastructure and dynamic, user-specific routing significantly reduced disruption risk, regardless of user location, device characteristics, and access requirements. Correspondingly, their investments in AppGate ZNTA resulted in improved uptime, speed, and performance.

• The network security architect in the technology industry noted that AppGate’s cloaked infrastructure helped improve network performance while also strengthening security: “With AppGate ZTNA, you don’t have to deny traffic — the network just doesn’t exist if you don’t qualify for it, so everything is dark unless you qualify to get access. ... You can represent with a VPN solution to an extent but the fact that [with AppGate], in real time, your machine could become uncompliant based on some foreign effect and then your access would automatically be reduced based on your risk score. That was phenomenal, a game changer.”

• The network manager in the technology services industry said that AppGate ZTNA made it easier to maintain more up-to-date versions, mitigating disruption both during the patching process and through improved uptime for everyday operations: “When a new version is released, we test that in the development platform and then deploy to the production environment, and it just happens. We do that every six months. [Before AppGate], we had to do more upgrades [than we actually] could because [in] the complex [legacy] environment … had outages [when we tried]. Now it’s a smooth process because we can just do it one controller at a time so there is no impact for the end users. [T]here are fewer major incidents. … It’s designed in such a way that we have backups across countries or regions, so the outages are very minimal, and end users are also very happy.”

• The cybersecurity manager in the manufacturing industry stated: “Under the old model, we were struggling to get 300 people connected simultaneously. On AppGate [now], I routinely have [up to] 5,000. ... [Prior to AppGate], we were spending 30 to 40 hours a month troubleshooting [legacy] VPN problem, mainly around bandwidth and performance. Ultimately, not being able to solve it was the biggest reason … why we jumped over to AppGate and just went full steam with it. The performance at those sites where the VPN headends were got much better after AppGate was deployed because we took the load off of them of having to support all the VPN users.”

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• The composite organization has 15,000 users requiring secure remote access to network resources.

• In the prior environment, the composite organization’s legacy VPN experienced 1 hour of downtime per month due to outages and severe performance degradations.

• With AppGate ZTNA, the composite organization decommissions its legacy VPN, eliminates routing inefficiencies, and increases the number of high-performance users it can support. As a result, it reduces the total annual hours of downtime due to VPN outages by 80%.

• The fully burdened hourly rate for an end user is $40.

Risks. The following risks may impact this benefit:

• Organizational size, geography, industry, and revenue mix.

• Average availability and performance in legacy environments.

• Prevailing labor rates.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 20%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $955,000.

Improved IT Technical Operations

Evidence and data. Interviewees highlighted many ways in which AppGate ZTNA improved IT workflows for security, infrastructure, and network operational teams, as well as provided efficiencies for user and access management teams. Interviewees described how this eliminated manual onboarding processes, decreased ticket volumes, and improved the ability to segment critical assets without increasing risk or administrative burden. This helped the interviewees’ organizations deploy smaller teams to support more agile and cost-effective IT operations. In particular, interviewee shared how AppGate ZTNA:

• Enhanced networking and infrastructure operations. Interviewees reported that their organizations’ transition to automated workflows with AppGate ZTNA helped automate workflows related to networking and microsegmentation.

• Improved security operational efficiency across hybrid environments. Interviewees shared how AppGate ZTNA platform’s flexibility allowed security teams to maintain consistent policies across diverse environments, improving agility while strengthening overall security posture.
  The cybersecurity manager in the manufacturing industry stated: “Different use cases have different requirements, so we have close to 600 different applications [requiring secure access policies] plus 50 to 60 vendors, each of them connecting to maybe one or two servers each. … [Without AppGate, I] would probably need to double the team. We couldn’t do it with a six-person security team for 12,000 employees. It’s just too much, there’s just too much to do.”

• Streamlined identity and access management workflows. Interviewees reported many ways in which AppGate ZTNA helped IT resources enable fast, secure access in dynamic environments. They noted how policies were very dynamic in nature, making it easier for their teams to rapidly adjust and easily update policies as well once they were created.
  The head of information security in the financial services industry shared how their organization used AppGate ZTNA to manage entitlements: “Entitlements are easy to create with or without Application Discovery Service. Application Discovery Service helps you do it at scale but just even creating entitlements [was] something that would take maybe anywhere from like 4 to 8 or more labor hours for a senior or higher network architect [before AppGate ZTNA]. Now, I can have any one of our engineers easily work on it [and] deploy in 15 minutes or so to make a major policy change versus a day [in the prior environment].”

• Reduced ticket volumes and streamlined secure access troubleshooting. Interviewees reported many ways in which AppGate ZTNA helped IT resources enable fast, secure access compared to the prior environment.
  The network manager in the technology services industry also explained: “The volume has reduced drastically. … I see daily volume of around 15 tickets and in the past it was probably around 70 tickets per day. … In the past, because the volume of tickets was higher, we were taking around on an average 8 hours for a ticket reservation on an average. But now the SLA is less than 4 hours.”

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• In the prior environment, the composite organization dedicated approximately 25,000 labor hours, or the equivalent of 12 IT resources, to technical workflows related to security, networking, infrastructure, and user and access management.  

• With AppGate, the composite organization automates workflows across the onboarding and provisioning lifecycle, manages policies and entitlements more easily and consistently across diverse environments, and integrates with key third-party security and identity solutions. This reduces the labor effort needed to secure remote network access at scale by 50%.

• The fully burdened hourly rate for a technical resource is $69.

Risks. The following risks may impact this benefit:

• The number of users.

• The size of the IT team covering SecOps, NetOps, infrastructure, and user management.

• Legacy processes and solutions required to add, secure, and manage users and networking infrastructure in the prior environment.

• Prevailing labor rates, the skill sets available, and the extent to which IT resources can recapture time savings toward productive work.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 20%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $1.7 million.

Improved Agility

Evidence and data. Interviewees discussed how the shift to dynamic, software-defined network access with AppGate ZTNA enabled rapid gateway deployment and accelerated business operations. Customer-reported value drivers for this newfound business agility included:

• Shortened planning cycles with fewer requirements. Some interviewees described how their legacy, hardware-driven network architecture required months of coordination, hardware procurement, and manual configuration. With AppGate ZTNA, they described how their organizations were able decrease time to market with less resource planning and capital expenditure planning required to integrate newly acquired companies into their parent structure or to set up new offices or data centers.

  • The network security architect in the technology industry shared: “Everything is simple to do. You don’t need to plan as much anymore. In the past, when we set up a new location or we had a big project going, we had months and months of planning and with a lot of logistics involved. Now, [we have] the ability to just spin up something to get you into an isolated area with no access from outside other than the gateway. It was really a game changer that made everything easier and quicker [to scale].”
  • The head of information security in the financial services industry said: “[Prior to AppGate], a new office setup would easily take six months just to order private lines, build out the architecture, and enable end-to-end connectivity. Now, we’re basically just installing high-speed internet everywhere and letting things connect directly, which is ideal. [Without AppGate], my head of infrastructure would probably have his two senior most architects working on every aspect of that [with] hundreds of man hours [spread over] long nights and weekends.”
  • The cybersecurity manager in the manufacturing industry stated: “[It’s nice] to know that I’m not going to have to run around and buy a bunch of gear if we announce an acquisition tomorrow. I can wait until the next cycle and incorporate that into the major purchase plan because we’ve got that AppGate capability we can deploy nearly instantly.”

• Accelerated integration and deployment workflows. With AppGate, interviewees indicated that their organizations were able to deploy infrastructure rapidly. Some noted that their organizations transformed their rigid legacy access models and onboarding processes to be more flexible and were able to quickly adapt to changing business needs. This allowed them to onboard thousands of users within days with minimal internal resources during periods of high M&A growth.
  The cybersecurity manager in the manufacturing industry stated: “[AppGate ZTNA] speeds up the time to integrate, which just speeds up everything. It speeds up the ability to [achieve] synergies and cost [savings] and collaboration. Everything moves faster when everybody has access to what they need when they need it. [The business user] is never frustrated by waiting on security [because] they don’t have to wait.”

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• In the prior environment, the composite organization:

  • Earned 1% of its annual revenue, or $961,000 per week, from growth activities like organically opening new sites and through mergers and acquisitions.
  • Grew by an average of two sites annually, either by organic growth or M&A activity.
  • Took eight weeks to open a new site or integrate an acquired company.

• With AppGate ZTNA, the composite organization avoids lengthy planning hardware procurement cycles when opening new sites due to the on-demand nature of AppGate infrastructure provisioning. The flexible, API-first architecture empowers IT teams with full programmability to automate, integrate, and scale new sites. This reduces the integration timeline and increases time to revenue by 90%.

• The composite organization’s operating margin is 11%.

Risks. The following risks may impact this benefit:

• The number of users.

• The number of companies acquired and/or new sites opened throughout the investment period.

• Legacy processes required to absorb a new company and/or open a new site in the prior environment.

• Prevailing labor rates and the skill sets available.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 20%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $3.0 million.

Unquantified Benefits

Interviewees mentioned the following additional benefits that their organizations experienced but were not quantified for this study:

• Improved regulatory compliance and cybersecurity insurance posture. Interviewees shared how AppGate supported their organizations in navigating evolving regulatory demands by offering flexible security controls, detailed access reporting, and continuous visibility. They noted how this strengthened their organizations’ compliance efforts while also improving cyber insurance outcomes.

  • The network security architect in the technology industry shared how their organization was able to enhance the security of their development and production environment while also enriching the information needed for auditors and compliance requirements: “Because of the reporting that we can get from the system on every single access attempt and all network flows, it has really enriched what we can provide as evidence for compliance. … And because you have that ability to test it on a single user or a block of users, it’s easy to prove a concept before moving to production. That’s another thing that frequently comes up in our compliance reviews, the fact that … the production system can be split into dev if you like for a short amount of time, for a short a small space, or for a small project because everything is software defined.”
  • The cybersecurity manager in the manufacturing industry shared how their organization’s demand-based full tunneling capabilities improved their ability to reach compliance: “Our insurance company loves the fact that we’re on AppGate. They love the Zero Trust of it. They love our policy granularity. They love the invisible infrastructure, the continuous risk evaluation. … One of our compliance standards states that when you’re accessing certain government data, you cannot be simultaneously connected to a secure and nonsecure network, so when users need to access that data, they have to flip to a full tunnel VPN profile. … AppGate is definitely a key piece of the compliance puzzle for us. We’re leveraging it to satisfy multiple controls.”

• Improved product quality. Some interviewees shared how AppGate helped improve product quality by ensuring developers stayed securely connected to their work environments without interruption, allowing them to focus on tasks and complete them more efficiently. As a result, they noted that their software development lifecycle was shorter and more responsive to customer feedback.
  The cybersecurity manager in the manufacturing industry stated: “They don’t have to worry about getting access to what they need because AppGate will provide that access when they need it … and I think that enables the business to move faster just in general. Safety is obviously number one but then running fast and doing things quickly is also key. On the secure access side of things, we’re never the bottleneck. We can get you access as fast as you need it. You’re not going to be waiting on AppGate to get anything done. The moment you ask, it’s going to happen, and it’s going to work the first time. It just enables the business to run at the speed that they need to do great things.”

• Increased remote work-related benefits. AppGate enabled secure remote work at scale by allowing employees at the interviewees’ organizations to access systems from any location, which improved hiring flexibility, supported workforce mobility, and ensured compliance with location-based access restrictions.

  • The network security architect in the technology industry shared how AppGate enabled a secure remote work by allowing employees to relocate freely while maintaining controlled access based on location policies, improving flexibility without compromising compliance or visibility. They noted, “The flexibility really does bring a lot of ease to the [remote user] base.”
  • The cybersecurity manager in the manufacturing industry stated that AppGate enabled secure access for employees regardless of location, allowing their organization to hire the best talent without geographic limitations and ensuring reliable connectivity to necessary resources: “I think the success of AppGate has accelerated our ability to hire remotely, so instead of restricting our hiring to just geographic regions where we have offices, we’re able to look for the best candidate irrespective of where they’re located and we know that the AppGate solution will get them access to their data that they need to do their job no matter where they are in the world.”
  • The network security architect in the technology industry shared: “The massive overall impact has been on end users because no one has to be anywhere to do their work — the idea that you don’t have to get to an office because you need access to critical resources. Everyone can be available 24/7 and there’s no excuse for you not to be able to get to your work wherever you are.”

Flexibility

The value of flexibility is unique to each customer. There are multiple scenarios in which a customer might implement ZTNA and later realize additional uses and business opportunities, including:

• Cloud transformation enablement. Interviewees also discussed how they leveraged AppGate’s flexible deployment capabilities to support cloud transformation across global sites. Even in environments with legacy infrastructure and limited historical documentation, AppGate facilitated smooth transitions and modernization efforts.
  The cybersecurity manager in the manufacturing stated that AppGate was a critical part of their organization’s cloud transformation strategy due to its extensibility into private cloud infrastructures located in other geographical regions and ability to deploy gateways closer to users and their workloads.

• Integrations. Interviewees shared how their organizations integrated AppGate ZTNA seamlessly into their evolving technology stacks with identity and endpoint security platforms to enforce conditional access policies at the network layer, enhancing compliance, reducing risk, and improving overall security posture through real-time device and user validation.
  The head of information security in the financial services industry said that their organization integrated AppGate with Microsoft Entra ID to enforce conditional access policies at the network layer, creating a tightly coordinated system of identity, device compliance, and Zero Trust network controls: “[We like] its ability to be interoperable with other best of breed [solutions] like CrowdStrike… [And] one of the things that AppGate does really well is it pulls in Entra ID, Microsoft telemetry, and it could basically enforce those conditional access policies, but at the network layer. … So, it’s multifactor with numbers matching plus compliant device, plus being enrolled in our CrowdStrike system with full enforcement. And so, if all of those things don’t match, you’re not getting in. It’s the perfect symbiosis of all of those things.”

• Zero Trust initiatives. For interviewees whose organizations were in the process of integrating Zero Trust principles into their environments, AppGate ZTNA was noted as an enabling factor.

  • The cybersecurity manager in the manufacturing industry stated: “AppGate ZTNA was the first product we put in at [our company] that followed the Zero Trust model. … Over the last five years, we’ve ratcheted [our] policies down using the data within AppGate … by [using it to] look at where they actually are going. We use the AppGate data to reinforce the AppGate policy and now, probably 90% of the policies would qualify as a Zero Trust[-compliant] policy.”
  • The head of information security in the financial services industry stated that AppGate ZTNA’s ability to thwart lateral movement provided an important additional layer of security: “We [can] achieve full universal ZTNA with AppGate, which we couldn’t achieve with [our legacy cloud-routed ZTNA solution] because we can never fit into that old funnel. ... [By governing all of those 594 devices versus just 200 laptops, basically we’ve increased our ability to protect to 100% of our endpoints versus a subset of our endpoints in the past. It’s a huge net improvement.”

• Agentic AI enablement. Interviewees indicated that AppGate facilitated ongoing collaboration and feature development aligned with their organizational needs, enabling more responsive support and integration of emerging technologies like agentic AI workloads and systems.

Flexibility would also be quantified when evaluated as part of a specific project (described in more detail in Total Economic Impact Approach).